Governing: While our distracted national media fawn over a murderous dictator's evil sister and pretend that the Rob Porter White House scandal means something, President Trump continues to remake our government. Quietly, Trump has begun to whittle away at the power and permanence of our nation's bureaucratic ruling class by slashing regulations and limiting powers that Congress foolishly has allowed it to take over. It's not merely the size of the bureaucracy that matters. It's the increasing power that gives the anonymous men and women who toil in the U.S.' unofficial fourth branch of government immense say over nearly every...

President Trump plans to take the huge federal Civil Service off cruise control, ending automatic pay increases that go to 99.7 percent of the workforce, trimming fat benefit packages, and for the “worst,” rolling out his trademark phrase from The Apprentice, “You’re fired!” In his budget, set for release Monday, his administration is planning the biggest reform to the federal workforce in decades, using models from Amazon, Google, and a handful of well-operating agencies. Officials said the overall goal is to bring the 1950s-styled Civil Service into the digital age, introduce automation, reward “the best” with bonuses, make it easier...

Pencil pushers. Desk jockeys. There are a lot of names for the bureaucrats who fill the offices of the federal government. President Trump says they, and their work, need to be examined more closely. He fired a major shot in the effort to enact civil service reform during his State of the Union address, creating what one leading workforce expert hopes will be an effort to root out the “intransigence and incompetence” from the federal workforce. In his speech, Trump hailed the passage of legislation in 2017 that gave more authority for Veterans Affairs Secretary Dr. David Shulkin to fire...

Across the vast federal bureaucracy, Donald J. Trump's arrival in the White House has spread anxiety, frustration, fear and resistance among many of the two million nonpolitical civil servants who say they work for the public, not a particular president. At the Environmental Protection Agency, a group of scientists strategized this past week about how to slow-walk President Trump’s environmental orders without being fired. At the Treasury Department, civil servants are quietly gathering information about whistle-blower protections as they polish their resumes. At the United States Digital Service - the youthful cadre of employees who left jobs at Google, Facebook...

The European Court of Justice has pointed the finger at unequal retirement plans between men and women in the French civil service. EurActiv France reports. According to a judgment by the ECJ (17 July), the French retirement system for civil servants is discriminating against men. “French rules on certain pension-related advantages granted to civil servants give rise to indirect discrimination on grounds of sex,” the court decided. […] French law states that if a civil servant has raised at least three children, he or she can benefit from early retirement. It also outlines “service credit advantages” to parents working in...

The Greek government began its first mass-firing of public-sector workers in more than 100 years this week, part of an effort to lay off 180,000 by 2015 under Europe-imposed austerity. Pushed by its European creditors amid its crippling economic crisis, Greece began this week to do something it hasn't done in more than 100 years: fire public-sector workers en masse. Following weeks of tough negotiations with its lenders – the "troika" of the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, and the European Central Bank – the Greek government started laying off public-sector workers in an effort to implement the austerity...

Welcome to the city of Bell. Average income: $24,800, $8,000 less than the national average. Public debt per capita: $1,972, up from $599 six years ago. Average wage for the cityâ€™s leaders?Well, thatâ€™s where things get nuanced. An overflow crowd packed a City Council meeting in Bell, a mostly Hispanic city of 38,000 about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles, to call for the resignation of Mayor Oscar Hernandez and other city officials. Residents left standing outside the chamber banged on the doors and shouted Â“fuera,Â” or Â“get outÂ” in Spanish.It was the first council meeting since the...

Though his agency was charged with coordinating the federal response to the major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Department of the Interior chief of staff Tom Strickland was in the Grand Canyon with his wife last week participating in activities that included white-water rafting, ABC News has learned. Other leaders of the Interior Department were focused on the Gulf, joined by other agencies and literally thousands of other employees. But Strickland’s participation in a trip that administration officials insisted was “work-focused” raised eyebrows among other Obama administration officials and even within even his own department, sources told ABC...

You really can be bored to death, scientists discover Tedium: People with dull jobs must find outside interests, experts warn Boredom could be shaving years off your life, scientists have found. Researchers say that people who complain of boredom are more likely to die young, and that those who experienced 'high levels' of tedium are more than two-and-a-half times as likely to die from heart disease or stroke than those satisfied with their lot. More than 7,000 civil servants were studied over 25 years - and those who said they were bored were nearly 40 per cent more likely to...

These days, the media seems awash in reports of various elected officials and civil servants who are either in the business of raking in as much money as they can on the public dime, trying to score a vacated Senate seat (President Barack Obama’s, which was filled by one Roland Burris…read and listen to the transcript of his groveling and scheming to get the Senate seat HERE) or of municipal and state employees who are making obscene amounts of pay relative to their counterparts in the private sector (check out this chart of 2007 San Francisco city employee pay HERE).

Note: The following text is a quote: Gates Discusses Tough Decisions, Congressional Oversight By Jim Garamone American Forces Press Service CARLISLE BARRACKS, Pa., April 16, 2009 – In his two-and-a-half years as Defense secretary, Robert M. Gates has had many hard decisions to make. But none, he said here today, compare to the difficulty of his part in sending men and women into combat. “The rest of it all pales by comparison,” Gates told students at the Army War College here. “Knowing what I have to do, but knowing the consequences.” Approving combat deployments, Gates said, is not an ethical...

WASHINGTON -- Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair on Wednesday criticized the federal government for failing to take more aggressive steps to prevent Americans from losing their homes, highlighting a rift between her and other senior U.S. officials over terms of the $700 billion rescue package. The government plan will help stabilize financial markets but it doesn't do enough to address home foreclosures, the root of the crisis, she said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "Why there's been such a political focus on making sure we're not unduly helping borrowers but then we're providing all this...

WASHINGTON - Congress thinks the federal government would work better if more civil servants just stayed home. The House, on a voice vote Tuesday, approved legislation requiring the head of each federal agency to set policies allowing qualified workers to telework, or work from home or a convenient location. The bill specifies that eligible employees should be permitted to telework at least 20 percent of the hours worked in a two-week period, generally the equivalent of two work days. "A happy workforce is a productive workforce," said Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., the bill's sponsor. He said giving more federal workers...

Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson wants to curb government spending by halting federal hiring. If elected, Thompson said, he would stop government agencies from acquiring new personnel for one year and his administration would perform senior-level assessments of agency priorities. “This will give a new administration time to assess its personnel requirements in order to ‘right size’ the federal workforce,” according to a statement posted earlier this week on Thompson’s campaign Web site. Two other candidates have promised to reshape the federal workforce. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said he would not rehire half the positions that will...

The State Department is backing down for now from forcing diplomats to serve in Iraq this summer because enough have volunteered to work in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and in outlying provinces, officials said Thursday. Three foreign service officers who signed up for the last of the 48 vacancies have won tentative approval. Once personnel panels give a formal OK, the department will announce it will not need to enforce a plan for the forced assignments, the officials said Thursday. That word could come as early as Friday, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because...

A bitter dispute over forced assignments to Iraq has erupted inside the State Department with diplomats taking decidedly undiplomatic potshots at one another. The latest public salvo came Tuesday with a harshly critical post on the department's official blog in which a foreign service officer in Iraq skewered those who spoke out against the prospect of ordered tours of duty at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and outlying provinces. The message, titled "A Letter From Iraq to My Overwrought Colleagues," accused opponents of being spoiled elitists whose revolt against so-called "directed assignments" is embarrassing. "To my vexed and overwrought colleagues,...

Immigration officials refuse to grant Morristown police officers expanded powers to enforce laws against illegal aliens, in part, because the anticipated caseload increase could choke the system, police say. Morristown City Council member Mel Tucker, who pushed the initiative, is steamed and adds he’s not taking "no" for an answer. The Morristown Police Department approached the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency about having two MPD officers trained to perform certain duties of a federal immigration agent. The so-called 287(g) program would have expanded police powers in two ways, according to Lt. Chris Wisecarver, MPD training officer who was assigned...

Eleven public officials from across New Jersey, including 5 Pleasantville officials, were arrested Thursday in a federal corruption probe, the U.S. Attorney's office said. --snip-- More than 100 public officials in the state have been convicted on federal corruption charges in the last five years. Two other Democratic state senators, Wayne Bryant of Lawnside and Sharpe James of Newark, are among others facing pending corruption charges.

Question: What do IRS employees do when April 15 is nowhere on the horizon? Well, even when they aren't chasing down people who've listed dogs, deceased relatives or garden gnomes as dependents, it looks like their days are well spent. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) has found inappropriate e-mail--chain letters, jokes, and yes, porn--on a whopping 74 percent of IRS employees' computers. The summary of the findings were detailed in a report titled "Inappropriate Use of E-mail and System Configuration Management Weaknesses Are Creating Security Risks." Guess it just goes to show that the tax guys really...